Latest News - Page 54

Qualcomm and MediaTek are pushing to adopt TSMC's 2nm N2P process in 2026 to gain an early performance edge over Apple's upcoming A20 and A20 Pro chips.

The move could see their next-gen SoCs target higher clock speeds to deliver better single and multi-core performance. According to a report from WCCF Tech, citing Weibo Smart Chip Insider, both companies are prioritizing the more advanced N2P node over the standard N2 process, despite the higher cost-per-unit associated with it.

2nm chipsets from Qualcomm and MediaTek could be 20 percent more expensive than current flagship SoCs. This raises questions about how many OEMs will be willing to absorb the cost, especially in a market where price sensitivity is growing due to factors such as AI gobbling up DRAM.

One of the biggest new additions to gaming mouse technology arrived earlier this year with the Logitech G PRO X2 SUPERSTRIKE. Its 'Haptic Inductive Trigger System' (HITS) introduced a magnetic-like switch for the left- and right-click buttons that let users adjust actuation points and travel distances, as well as fine-tune the force feedback or 'click' feel.

Much like magnetic switches in the keyboard space, it's a game-changer for competitive gamers that play shooters like Counter-Strike 2 or Arc Raiders, as it unlocks a new level of customization and control. Logitech's HITS is the first magnetic switch for a gaming mouse we've seen, and with it delivering on its promise, it was only a matter of time before others followed suit and put their own spin on the idea of an adjustable magnetic switch for a gaming mouse.

Which brings us to Keychron's upcoming MaOptic switch, which it's teasing in the video above. However, what makes this different is that it appears to combine the versatility and customization of magnetic switches with the tactile, responsive click-feel of optical switches. And according to the company, you'll be able to switch freely between Optical and Linear Magnetic Modes via its web-based customization app.

OpenAI has launched Daybreak, a new cybersecurity platform powered by GPT-5.5 and the Codex agent framework. Daybreak is designed to help tech companies identify and fix software vulnerabilities, and is a direct response to Anthropic's Project Glasswing.

The platform aims to embed cyber defense into software from the beginning of the development process, not just as an afterthought. Daybreak builds on the success of OpenAI's earlier GPT-5.4-Cyber model, which helped remediate over 3,000 security flaws.

It uses Codex Security to create an editable threat model from a company's software repository and focuses on the most realistic attack paths. It also validates fixes in an isolated environment, ensuring patches work without causing unintended issues.

ASUS Republic of Gamers (ROG) is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, and we're expecting some big announcements from the gaming-focused brand at Computex 2026. And thanks to a little teaser over on the official ASUS ROG Instagram page, we've got our first look at what one of these might be, a reimagining of one of the very first premium motherboards released under the ROG banner.

In fact, this is a motherboard we reviewed back in 2006, the ASUS Crosshair Republic of Gamers, and noted it was "extremely powerful and stacked with impressive features" for gamers and overclockers. Although the look and feel of PC gaming hardware has definitely evolved over the subsequent 20 years, this first ROG Crosshair motherboard helped set the brand's trend of releasing stylish and powerful gear, thanks to its bright copper heatsink that covered the VRM, northbridge, and southbridge.

And it's the copper heatsink and classic ROG logo in the teaser that point to it being a reimagining of the classic motherboard. One of the more notable design touches on the original was its inclusion of a pretty basic LCD for monitoring, with this teaser hinting that the 20th-anniversary edition ROG Crosshair motherboard will ship with a full-color display featuring an animated version of the classic ROG logo.

A 155 GB unencrypted build of Forza Horizon 6 was leaked online before its scheduled release, and Playground Games has confirmed that the source was not a Steam employee or technical error but a reviewer, influencer, or industry insider.

The leak, which surfaced online nearly a week before the game's planned debut, came after an unencrypted Steam build was uploaded, allowing the files to be freely accessed and shared. Reports from Reddit and cracking forums indicated that the files included thousands of assets, effectively giving early access to the game's full content.

The incident raises serious concerns about how unreleased game builds are handled within the industry. Playground Games, known for its meticulous development and release strategies, now faces the challenge of mitigating the impact of the leak on both consumer excitement and competitive integrity.

In the 1980s, the idea of the home or personal computer was still relatively new or niche, which is why affordable options that connected to a standard TV found success. Two of the biggest names from the era, the Commodore 64 and the ZX Spectrum, found success in the US and Europe, respectively, and were also home to what we know as computer games.

Games for these systems would go on to influence and even lead to the creation of some of the most well-respected designers and development studios in gaming history. And to celebrate the gaming legacy of these computers, Blaze Entertainment and Retro Games Ltd have partnered to create two portable retro gaming handheld consoles focused on classic Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum gaming.

Dubbed the THEC64 Handheld and The Spectrum Handheld, both devices flip open to reveal a 4.3-inch display with an 800x480 resolution. Certainly low-res by modern standards, but this is still a lot more pixels than these early home computers were pushing out. Each handheld comes pre-installed with 25 classic games to highlight this era of early gaming.

According to a new leak and report over at VideoCardz, citing leaked documents and information from AMD, the company is planning to launch a new entry-level RDNA 4 graphics card, the Radeon RX 9050. According to the information, this would use the full Navi 44 GPU in the Radeon RX 9060 XT, with the main differences being VRAM capacity and lower clock speeds.

The specs for the Radeon RX 9050, which are still to be confirmed, list the GPU as featuring 8GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit bus at 18.0 Gbps. This would deliver memory bandwidth of 288 GB/s, matching the baseline Radeon RX 9060, while coming in lower than the Radeon RX 9060 XT's 320 GB/s.

As for the clock speeds, the 2,048 Stream Processors, which match the Radeon RX 9060 XT, feature a Game Clock of 1,920 MHz and a Boost Clock of 2,600 MHz. This is notably lower than the 3,130 MHz reference Boost Clock speed of the Radeon RX 9060 XT, by 530 MHz, or around 17%. The difference is larger when looking at the Game Clock speeds, suggesting that the Radeon RX 9050 would ship with a lower power draw than the 9060 XT 8GB's TDP rating of 150W.

Blizzard may finally be cooking up World of Warcraft Classic Plus, a long-rumored version of the original MMO with modern updates.

The studio recently invited top streamers like Sodapoppin and Esfand to its California HQ under NDA, fueling speculation that something major is in the works. Blizzard hasn't officially confirmed the project, but the secrecy and targeted invite list point to a new take on the classic experience, as all the streamers it invited are known for streaming Blizzard's current Classic version of World of Warcraft.

WoW Classic Plus would diverge from the original game's timeline, offering a mix of nostalgia and updated systems. Essentially, WoW would be getting the Old School Runescape, which, for those who don't know, happened after RuneScape's developers rolled out the Evolution of Combat update, which completely overhauled RuneScape's combat mechanics, resulting in a mass exodus of players.

NVIDIA has confirmed a data breach affecting GeForce NOW users in Armenia, though the company insists its own systems were not compromised.

The breach, which occurred between March 20 and March 28, 2026, was traced to a regional partner, GFN.am, which manages the service across several Eastern European and Central Asian countries. Stolen data includes names, email addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, and usernames, but not passwords or data from accounts created after March 9.

The threat actor, using the alias ShinyHunters, listed the data for sale on an underground hacking forum for $100,000 in Bitcoin or Monero. However, ShinyHunters itself denied involvement, calling the breach an "imposter" incident. The forum post was later deleted, though it's unclear whether GFN.am negotiated with the attackers or if administrators removed the thread.

With AI models achieving new milestones, it was inevitable that security experts' fears would come true. Google's Threat Intelligence Group has, for the first time, discovered a threat actor using a zero-day exploit likely developed with AI. A zero-day vulnerability is a software or hardware flaw that is unknown to developers, leaving them with zero days to patch it before attackers can exploit it.

The exploit targeted a popular open-source web-based system administration tool. Google called the threat actor a prominent cybercrime group that allegedly planned to use the flaw in a mass exploitation campaign. Had it gone undetected, the flaw would have allowed hackers to bypass two-factor authentication and access victim accounts with just a password.

Google investigators suspect, with "high confidence," that the exploit was developed with the help of an unidentified AI program, based on the Python code's structure and content. The report says the script has educational docstrings, a fake CVSS score, and a Pythonic format typical of LLM training data.

What started as a congratulatory social media post turned into one of the industry's more significant moments this week. Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan posted on X to acknowledge NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang receiving an honorary doctorate in science and technology at Carnegie Mellon University, but also used the moment to publicly confirm that the two companies are still actively developing products together. It is the clearest public signal of forward progress since the partnership was announced, and the market noticed, with Intel's stock ticking up following the post.

To recap, Intel and NVIDIA announced their strategic partnership roughly eight months ago in a deal both companies described as historic. The two companies planned to collaborate across data centers and consumer PCs, with Intel building custom x86 CPUs that NVIDIA would integrate into its AI infrastructure platforms, as well as x86 SoCs featuring integrated NVIDIA RTX GPU chiplets targeting a range of consumer devices. NVIDIA also backed the deal with a $5 billion equity investment in Intel, which has since received regulatory clearance.

Public updates from either side have been relatively sparse since the initial announcement, which is part of why Tan's post generated so much attention. While the actual development work appears to be taking place out of the public eye, the CEOs of both companies have now confirmed that the collaboration is still active.

PlayStation 3 emulator RPCS3 is pushing back against a wave of AI-generated code submissions to its open-source GitHub project. The team has updated its guidelines and now requires contributors to fully understand and own the code they submit, even if AI was used during the research process.

The new rules arrived just a day after the team posted on the social media platform X, pushing back against the barrage of AI pull requests hitting the project. RPCS3 reported having to revert multiple "slop PRs" that slipped through and caused major regressions in the emulator, requiring significant extra work from the team to fix.

The updated guidelines do not ban AI-generated code outright but require contributors to disclose any use of AI and take full responsibility for what they submit. All communications with the RPCS3 team must be handled by a human contributor, and pull requests that do not disclose AI use may be closed without review.

PureDark has released a new paid upscaler mod that brings NVIDIA DLSS 4.5 and Dynamic Multi Frame Generation support to The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - a title now more than a decade old. The mod is available through PureDark's Patreon and is aimed at RTX 50-series GPU owners looking to take advantage of NVIDIA's latest DLSS technologies.

Released back in 2015, CD Projekt's The Witcher 3 predates DLSS entirely, as NVIDIA first introduced the technology in 2019. However, the game's 2022 next-gen update added support for DLSS Super Resolution, Frame Generation, Reflex, ray-traced global illumination, FSR 2, and Ultra+ settings. However, the game doesn't officially support NVIDIA's latest DLSS 4.5 technology, which launched early this year.

DLSS 4.5 Dynamic Multi Frame Generation works differently from fixed MFG modes. Instead of a fixed frame multiplier, NVIDIA says it automatically adjusts the generation multiplier based on target frame rate, display refresh rate, or GPU load.

The launch date of the much-anticipated Forza Horizon 6 is approaching quickly, but we may have a disaster on our hands just 10 days before the release. The game recently went gold, and we even know its file size as it is available to preload. The 6th iteration of the beloved Horizon series is slated to launch on May 19th, 2026, but apparently, the full game leaked on Steam days before it was meant to be available.

Yes, that's right. The full Forza Horizon 6 game was leaked on Steam, and multiple users on social media stumbled upon the entire game files on SteamDB. The news quickly spread on social media and Reddit and was later corroborated by major gaming news outlets like Insider Gaming. What's even more baffling is that the game files were uploaded without encryption, meaning the full game is available to download from sites I'd rather not mention.

If that wasn't enough, the source of the leak wasn't a hacker or an unethical group trying to play the game before release. No, the entire 155GB repository of Forza Horizon 6 was uploaded (without encryption, mind you) by Playground Games itself, per Insider Gaming. Someone is definitely getting fired somewhere because of this blunder. Of course, Playground Games denies any wrongdoing leading to the leak, so it's still up in the air as to who leaked it.

As personnel costs increase, tariffs drive up shipping, and supply issues continue driving up component prices, Nintendo navigates a continually challenging market with its new Switch 2 console generation.

The Switch 2 console generation may become a grueling profit grind, at least when compared to its predecessor. From the get-go, Nintendo has said from the start that the Switch 2 costs more to make than the Switch 1, leading to a $499 asking price (which will jump to $549 on Sept 1). The original MSRP included tariff impacts into the price, but new entanglements--like the war in Iran, which has disrupted global oil prices--have pushed Nintendo to make a price hike.

This price hike, Nintendo says, was essential to preserving the profitability of the Switch 2 console. If the price had stayed the same, then new global volatility could eat into hardware profits on a systematic level. Nintendo's latest FY26 results give a clear example of the impact this is having on the company.

Capcom's Pragmata continues its successful sales streak, tacking on another million copies sold across all platforms.

Pragmata has become a surprise breakout new IP for Capcom. The game has now sold over 2 million copies in 16 days, making it among the fastest-selling games of the year. The sci-fi hit's cybernetic child character Diana has seemingly captured the hearts of millions of gamers worldwide, as multi-million Q4 sellers aren't entirely common in the games industry.

That being said, 2026 looks to be Capcom's year. Between just Pragmata and Resident Evil 9, the publisher is on a roll; the latter has sold a strong 7 million copies in nearly two months on the backing of the prestige brand. The new Monster Hunter Stories 3 Twisted Reflection game also popped up in the top 10 best-selling games of March in the US, and the recent Mega Man Star Force Legacy Collection also reviewed well.

Nintendo just revealed two of the fastest-selling games of the year...and they are actually decades old.

Nintendo's latest Q4'FY26 results show the reemergence of a trend that old-school fans will recognize quite well: That distinct mix of Pokemon fever and nostalgia have combined to lead to mega-million sales. Nintendo's earnings revealed a bunch of new data, including higher sales and lower profits, but among the numbers was an interesting update about Pokemon.

Pokopia, the latest Pokemon game, is among one of the most popular titles of 2026. The game sold 2.2 million copies in 4 days, then moved on to sell 2.41 million in 26 days, and now more recently 4 million sales in 5 weeks. In a Q&A with investors, Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa has officially recognized Pokopia as a system-seller, confirming Wedbush's suspicions.

More details about the Xbox Discord crossover have surfaced, revealing a unique cross-subscription partnership where enthusiast gamers can benefit the most.

Microsoft and Discord have criss-crossed their respective gaming services. Discord Nitro subscribers now get access to the Xbox Game Pass starter edition, which includes access to 50+ PC and console games across both first-party and third-party titles.

Game Pass Ultimate subscribers get some freebie Nitro perks too, including 250 Discord Orbs, 1.2x extra Orb multiplier for quests, and shop discounts. It was revealed that Discord Nitro subscribers will also get these things for free every month as well, and it's unclear whether or not that the Ultimate bonuses/orbs will stack with the existing Nitro bonuses.

The Nintendo Switch 2 has sold nearly 20 million units, beating the company's internal estimates...but the milestone comes at a steeper cost than the company was used to paying throughout the previous Switch 1 lifecycle.

The Switch 2 generation is proving to be much more expensive to maintain than its predecessor's. The ongoing RAM shortage continues shrinking supply and driving up prices, and Nintendo has held off for as long as possible, but the price hike was inevitable--the Switch 2 will cost $50 more starting September 1. It doesn't help that Nintendo's new console, the Switch 2, is less profitable on a unit sale level than the smaller, more affordable Switch 1.

Normally, the Switch 2's sales update--19.86 million sold in 9 months--would be a cause for celebration, but Nintendo is also facing a negative profit margin situation with its Japan-only Switch 2 models. This will be addressed starting in Q2'27 with the price hike, but Nintendo had already gone through multiple quarters of profit impacts through FY26.

AMD's new Dense Geometry Format (DGF) for modern PC game development is all about increasing geometric complexity for ray tracing, paving the way for improved performance when presenting detailed, complex, open-world environments. In a sense, it's similar to NVIDIA RTX Mega Geometry technology, with AMD's open solution breaking down an environment and compressing that data into geometry clusters.

AMD first introduced this new technology in a research paper it published back in July of 2024, and now it's matured to the point where it's available for developers to test and integrate into future games and engines, with support for Vulkan via an updated AMD DGF SDK. AMD has also confirmed that it has partnered with Samsung to bring DGF to "future mobile devices."

In addition to compressing geometric data for ray-tracing, this 30% reduction in storage costs opens the door to more detailed worlds. The compression also supports animated geometry, so it's all-encompassing. As an open-source solution, it's compatible with non-RDNA 4 or Radeon hardware, and the technology is also optimized for the next-generation RDNA 5 graphics that are set to hit PC and console markets.